Have we reached the end of the great publishing practice of MAD Magazine knock-offs? Since Bill Gaines's silly periodical began cleaning up on newsstands fifty years ago, rival publishers have been whipping up knock-offs with names like Sick, Blast, Crazy, Up Your Nose, The National Review, etc. (Okay, forget The National Review. It hasn't been funny in years.) But most of the others were…some for a long time, some for a few issues. My favorite of them was Sick, especially in the first issues edited by Joe Simon and written (mostly) by Dee Caruso…but the longest-running of them all was Cracked, which started in 1958 and endured into the new century without, insofar as I could see, ever developing a viewpoint or style of its own. At times, it looked like MAD's refugee camp, employing folks who were on the "outs" with Gaines.
Among many examples: The cover at upper right is from Cracked #10 and was painted by Will Elder…and for a long time, Cracked's lead artist was John Severin, who dated back to MAD #1. When "MAD's Maddest Artist," Don Martin, went away mad in a contract dispute, he found a home in Cracked. So did former MAD associate editor Jerry DeFuccio and one of MAD's most prolific writers, Lou Silverstone, who was an editor at Cracked for a time. (A number of MAD scribes considered it a dandy place to sell their rejects, often employing pen names.)
Cracked did, however, demonstrate enormous endurance. Rumor has it that this was because its publisher was in tight with a powerful distributor. Indeed, the magazine managed some incredible feats of penetration, even getting into that most coveted of outlets, airport gift shops. Last year at this time, it was the last surviving MAD doppelganger…but it's gone through a change of owners and some rough times. At last report, it had been more than six months since an issue materialized, though the publisher is telling contributors that this is a temporary condition and that they will also receive money they have long been owed. I hope so…but the two likeliest indicators of Death in magazine publishing are a suspension of publication and not paying your contributors. If it's history, it will be a sad end to a glorious tradition.